An Object of Beauty
Author: Steve Martin
Illustrator/Designer: Darren Booth
Art Director: Anne Twomey
Publisher: Grand Central Publishing
Typeface: hand drawn
Specials: The illustrated lettering was hit with an ultra high gloss and the paper stock emulated canvas texture. The thinking behind that was so it would actually feel like a piece of artwork.
Steve Martin has some nice book covers, but this one is my favorite by far. The book title is also the perfect description of the books design. An Object of Beauty. Thank you to Darren for all his help and patience.
—Charles Brock
How did you become a book cover designer/illustrator?
I'm an illustrator and letterer and graduated from Sheridan Institute's Illustration program back in 2001. Although I'm not a designer per say,
I get opportunities to design and art direct, and when given them, I take
them. Lately, I've been getting more opportunities to be a part of the
overall design process. I'm not exactly sure why that is happening,
but I'm not complaining.
What do you enjoy about your job?
I enjoy almost everything about my job except for writing estimates.
Each part of the job has it's own challenges that I enjoy and I'm grateful
to have known at an early age what my career was going to be. I'd be
lost without it.
Were there any steps taken before starting, and was there a clear working process that led to the final? Any known influences?
The Creative Director, Anne Twomey, mentioned in one of early conversations, that Steve Martin enjoyed the work of Ed Ruscha and
I kept that in mind when developing different approaches. Anne gave
me an incredible amount of freedom to "do my thing" but the one constraint was to ensure the artwork didn't appropriate any one artist, it needed
to have it's own identity. Ruscha's work gave me the idea to keep it simple and graphic. I've personally always enjoyed Robert Rauschenberg and Cy Twombly's work because there's often a lot going in small areas, which gave me the inspiration for some of the textures. My process is pretty much the same with every project I do—it's something I trust and have confidence in,
it starts on paper and ends on paper and there's very little computer involved. Once upon a time I would cut and paste my sketches until they were ready for final. Nowadays that's where the computer does a bit of the work as it makes more sense to just cut and paste in Photoshop until the elements
are in their right place.
Via Darren's blog.
What was the message behind the design? And what's something unique you learned while working on this project?
There's beauty in imperfections. The fact that the lettering is done by hand allows for that feeling of a human element to come across. In some of the letters, there's intentional and unintentional mistakes and that's one of the things I like about the design.
On this project, I learned how to incorporate and juggle the differences between inspiration and influence. I knew what the differences were, but I needed to employ both of these things to personally consider the design a success. Normally I don't try to be influenced by something, I just try to stick to inspiration as it helps to create originality. To me, the simplicity of the lettering is influenced by Ruscha's work because without it, there would have been no design or approach. Inspiration on the other hand, came from Rauschenberg and Twombly's work because even if I didn't use them to pull from, the backbone of the piece would still be there, it would just have a different color palette or different textures. I found it difficult to juggle those two things because so much of a creative's work is done intuitively so when you have to be conscious of certain constraints, whether they're imposed by
a client or self-imposed, it tends to create challenges that need to be met.
Thoughts from art director Anne Twomey
An Object of Beauty is a novel of an ambitious young woman set in Manhattan's high powered Art World during it's heady days of the early 1990's till now. It is also a history of modern art. The stated challenge was getting a cover for a celebrity author done and approved in little over a month. The unsaid challenges were that the finished book needed to be
as distinctive and beautiful as a piece of art itself.
With a strong title and beloved author, a text driven solution, seemed obvious. The author and I were both fans of Ed Ruscha's textual flat paintings and most periods of modern painting. I spent and afternoon at MOMA looking at several other pop artist: Larry Rivers, Robert Indiana, Robert Rauchenberg, and Jasper Johns all who had incorprated painted text to their work. My objective was to create a cover that emulated text driven art, without being derivitive of any one artist.
My first concept called for the cover lettering to be stencil die-cut, allowing for a painting on the book case to be revealed. However, production proved to be too complicated. Next was an attempt to make the title look like a painted canvas. I even thought of attempting to paint it myself. Thankfully, Darren Booth's masterfully illustrated type, had been on my radar. I hired him to do sketches and was thrilled with what I saw so he went to final quickly.
I envisioned a cover stock that emulated canvas. Much research was done to find a canvas stock that came in a version that looked like primed or unprimed canvas. Testing was done, particularly for the binding process as this plastic stock, typically used on book cases, had never been used as a book jacket before. Finally, Darren's painted lettering was hit with an ultra high gloss lamination that emulated an oil painting's linseed oil.
For the end papers, the only direction I gave Darren was to paint something inspired by Abstract Expressionism or Color Field painting.
The interior of the book, called for 4/c prints throughout. These prints of art work, follow the narrative of the book as opposed to being relgated to a central 4/c signature.
Steve Martin, publisher, editor, and agent were thilled with the final book and cover. The book was well publicized and went on to be a New York Times Bestseller and hit every national bestselling list.
An Object of Beauty has been featured on numerous television shows including The Late Show with David Letterman, Live! with Regis and Kelly, and The Colbert Report.
An Object of Beauty is in the AIGA Archives for 50 Books/50 Covers of 2010.
More work by Darren Booth.
Please visit Darren's website to see even more of his work.
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